ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching
Book Two, Chapter 229: Happy Birthday, Ernie
It’s Ernie’s eighty-second birthday.
On this day last year, I was with Bella. To celebrate Ernie’s birthday, we went to a Mexican restaurant on the corner — her idea. Afterward I followed her across the street to a yogurt shop, also her idea. She bought our desserts.
On this day last year Joshua was in L. A. and called me, in tears. “I’ve been dreading this day ever since what happened, happened,” he said. “I see men in their eighties, nineties. Daddy was cheated. He got robbed. He should have lived another ten years at least, into his nineties. He wanted to live. He gave it everything he had.”
That was last year.
Today Joshua leaves me a message. “Hey, little mama. It’s Daddy’s birthday. It’s a beautiful day. Awesome. A friend is coming in to visit me. That should be fun. I love you, and I’ll talk to you later.”
This evening he calls back. “Do you want to take a walk or get a bite to eat?”
It’s almost nine o’clock. The sun is caught in the treetops but soon will be gone. Joshua’s really calling just to make sure I’m okay on this day. We decide not to meet. He’s tired, and I’m okay. He seems relieved.
“I played putt-putt today — for obvious reasons — with my friend Jodi. It was her day off. She drove in from Lexington. We had fun. It was a great day.”
Joshua played putt-putt because that’s what he and Ernie did for fun. Last year he would not have gone to a putt-putt playground. Today he embraced it.
“I had two holes-in-one, and Jodi had one. She’s a sweet person. Sweet and nurturing and smart. She’s a nurse practitioner. Her father is seventy-five and has Alzheimer’s. That’s been rough on her and her mother. He was older when she was born, like Daddy was when I was born. She’s thirty-seven but looks twenty-three. She’s five feet tall.”
“Jockey size,” I say.
“Yes, jockey size. If Ellis Park had been open today, you and I would’ve gone there. But it’s only open on weekends now. Do you want to go to Ellis on Saturday?”
Ellis Park is a thoroughbred track in Henderson. The summer Joshua was fifteen he and Ernie took on Ellis for a week, staying in a motel, studying the racing form long into the night and planning their next-day’s bets. Later it’s where Ernie, Joshua, and I won our biggest Pick Six. Joshua hasn’t been back to Ellis in twenty-five years.
“I’ll go with you, Joshua, but I’m not buying a racing form. I may not even take any money. No, I’ll take a little money — we may find a good place to eat on the way there or back. But think about it. I won’t have any performance anxiety. I won’t care which horse wins or loses. I’m not invested in it. And that’s such a relief!”
“The Gardenia Stakes has already been run, and a longshot won it,” Joshua says. “That’s what usually happens. The big favorite, a Breeders’ Cup winner last year, finished third. She didn’t like Ellis.”
For a flash of a second I think: Oh, we missed an opportunity to cash in. Then sanity kicks in. I’m not chasing that kind of opportunity anymore. It’s a mirage. It’s a loss. It’s pain.
I’m on a different search now.
